Overview work on the Japanese American World War II incarceration aimed at middle and high school audiences.

Synopsis

The Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II
tells its story in nine chapters. After an opening chapter that covers the
attack on Pearl Harbor
, the
roundup of enemy aliens
, and the rising tide of anti-Japanese sentiment, chapter two steps back to examine Japanese immigration and the anti-Japanese movement. Chapters on the run up to
Executive Order 9066
and the beginning of forced removal follow. Chapter 5 includes profiles of the
Manzanar
,
Topaz
and
Tule Lake
camps, while chapter six examines the Japanese American Supreme Court cases and
resettlement
. Chapters seven and eight look at
military service
and
draft resistance
. The final chapter explores postwar redress and the continuing significance of this story particularly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Based entirely on secondary sources, the most cited works are
Peter Irons'
Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Roger Daniels'
Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Greg Robinson's
By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); and the anthology
Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience
edited by
Lawson Fusao Inada
(Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 2000).

The book includes an illustrated chronology and a list of additional resources. Historical photographs are incorporated into the text.

Additional Information

Author John Davenport (1960– ) is a middle school history teacher in California who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. He has authored numerous books on U.S. and world history as well as biographies for young audiences.

While incorporating relatively current research and being more detailed than most similar books,
The Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II
is marred by many errors, most of them minor. These include: reference to the "
Gentlemen's Agreement
of 1906" (page 13; the agreement consisted of correspondence taking place in 1907–08); misspelling the name of
Issei
naturalization law challenger Takao Ozawa as "Takeo" (15); over counting the number Japanese Americans from Hawai'i who were interned, citing 1,037 sent to
War Relocation Authority
camps, 675 in Justice Department internment camps and 1,500 "interned locally at Sand Island near Honolulu" (36; in addition to the last figure being too large, the vast majority of those held in
Sand Island
and the other camps in Hawaii were later sent to camps on the mainland and are thus included in the first two figures); attributing the internment of German and Italian aliens to Executive Order 9066 (37; as with Issei arrested after the attack on Pearl Harbor, this internment was authorized by the
Alien Enemies Act of 1798
); claiming Gen.
John DeWitt
was appointed to head the Army and Navy Staff College "[a]fter the Japanese surrender in 1945" (39; he was assigned to this position in 1943 after being removed as head of the Western Defense Command); claiming there were thirteen assembly centers (44; there were fifteen in addition to two "reception centers"); claiming that "more than 2,000
Latin American Japanese
" were held in WRA camps (46; nearly all were held in Justice Department administered camps); claiming that one of those killed in the
Manzanar riot/uprising
"was a 17-year-old girl" (49; both inmates who were shot by guards were young men); citing
Gila River
as having been managed by the Office of Indian Affairs (55; though both Gila and
Poston
were on Indian land, only Poston was managed by the OIA).

Other errors: quoting from Justice Frank Murphy's "dissent" in the
Hirabayashi
Supreme Court case
(63; the quote comes from the draft of a dissent; Murphy later had a change of heart and concurred with his colleagues in what became a unanimous decision); claiming that all four of the Japanese American cases "reached the Supreme Court in 1943" (63; the
Mitsuye Endo
case did not reach the court until 1944); claiming that the "
100th Battalion
had been shipped overseas by the time that the
442nd Regimental Combat Team
came into existence" (79; the 100th went overseas in the fall of 1943, while the 442nd formed in March 1943; three pages earlier it is implied that the 100th went overseas in the fall of 1942); claiming that the seven leaders of the
Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee
all "received terms of four years behind bars" (85; some received two-year terms); claiming that President Harry Truman addressed the 442nd and made his famous statement about fighting prejudice in 1948 (96; the ceremony was in 1946); and claiming the
Evacuation Claims Act
allocated $38 for settling property claims (96; $38 was the amount eventually paid out in claims, not the amount allocated).

For More Information

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Chronology

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Teacher Guide

Learn more in the Densho Encyclopedia, a free on-line resource covering the key concepts, people, events, and organizations that played a role in the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This material is based upon work assisted by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Useful Links

The Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration is a free project of Densho. Our mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.